Home Wealth Project
Extensive Research On How To Build Wealth From The Comfort Of Your Own Home.
How Google’s “Farmer” Update Has Hurt Small Brands
Mar 15th
[Added]Google’s “Farmer” Update was a major restructuring of their search index that was released to the US public sometime around March 1st. It was designed to show higher quality results by punishing sites that detract from the user experience (because the ads are obtrusive, the content is thin, the site loads slowly, users tend to “bounce” off the site quickly, etc). The average search user typically is not aware that a major Google Update has occurred. [/Added]
Before I start this article let me make one thing very clear. In the grand scheme of things, I’ve always respected Google’s commitment to a quality index. They have made huge strides over the years to reward quality and destroy junk. And I like that. A lot. It has made the web a better place. So while there is an emerging cottage industry of Google complainers, I have no intention of joining their ranks. Because at the end of the day I believe that Google’s entire business model depends on having the best search results. So yeah, I trust Google.
The purpose of this article is to point out some concrete ways in which the latest Google update named “Farmer” has had negative effects for small businesses and their brands. Admittedly, I am going to be a bit myopic and use one of my own websites as a case study. But the purpose is to draw attention to an obvious flaw in the update and how it reflects badly upon Google.
Like it or not, a lot of small businesses live or die based on their brands. The editors at a popular website that I own called PopCrunch recognized about 3-4 years back that in the entertainment space, the site needed to “differentiate or die.” So we took two approaches to differentiation. First, we created an online tv show that was featured on YouTube. That project, while a blast to put together and a fan favorite, simply couldn’t survive because of the economics of web video. We couldn’t monetize it. I’d love to bring the show back someday, but doing so would require a major long-term sponsor.
The other approach to differentiation was to create premium content that other people weren’t making (you can see a list of our premium content here). What we ended up doing was creating annual lists that took 100+ hours worth of man power to accomplish. The idea was this: all the publishers out there are throwing out short 200 word news articles. Let’s be better. Let’s contribute to the web and make unique content that’s fun but requires hard work. The kind of work not everyone is willing to do.
So we put the hard work in. And we built some popular brands. Some so popular, that they get mentioned on radio stations across the country and drive millions of unique visitors in a single day. Examples include: 100 Hottest Women of 2011. The Hottest Women in Radio. Hottest Student Bodies of 2010.
Yeah, yeah it’s not like we’re contributing to the intellectual stores of humanity with this content. But we are making stuff that people like. And we’re putting the hard work in to make it as high quality as we can within a small brand’s budget.
So what’s the big deal with Google’s Farmer Update? Well, like I said, we often get radio mentions of our content (because it’s THAT good) and with Google’s Farmer update, people searching the titles of many of our best articles (search any of the titles here) will have a hard time finding the original source. Instead of getting the original PopCrunch article, they’ll be sent to sites that copied PopCrunch’s article or simply linked to it.
Here’s a search you can do to see what I mean: 100 Hottest Women of 2011
Showing above PopCrunch are scraper sites like InnewsToday.net , CastNews.us, Newmoviereleasesdvd.Loginby.com and Social Link Sites like Populnks.com, Topix.com, Digg.com, etc.
So imagine this situation. Radio Station X spends ten minutes talking about our list of the 100 Hottest Women of 20011. A slew of listeners go to Google, whom they implicitly trust and search for 100 Hottest Women of 2011 and what do you know, Google fails to show them what they were looking for.
We have already been told by a few of our contacts in the radio industry that they’ve had listeners calling into the station because they can’t find the article that the morning DJ’s were talking about. That’s not just PopCrunch’s problem. It’s Google’s problem too.
And it’s not just an isolated case. I’ve talked with dozens of small brand owners who run legitimate, defensible, differentiated websites who have seen very similar results.
So the moral of the story is that Google’s brand depends on returning the results that people expect to get. And I expect that it’s not just in my interest, but in Google’s interest as well to fix the issue I’ve defined as soon as they can.
In the meantime, we’ll keep producing the best content we can and strive to get even better. It’s the waiting on a giant that’s the tough part.
View full post on Business Pundit
Google’s Latest Changes Hamper Black Hat SEO Practices
Dec 14th
Google has made changes to their algorithm that has put the kibosh on the latest round of black hat SEO tactics. Black hat SEO are tactics some SEO “experts” use to get their site ahead in the search rankings in a not so ethical way.
“According to a recent statement by search engine giant, Google, the company has altered its search algorithm to better deal with black hat SEO practices and companies that use less than ethical practices to promote their website,” says Crisafi. “Word has it that the change was inspired by an online retailer who demeaned customers into posting links to his website on popular complaint websites and forums, thus garnering his business a higher Google PageRank.”
Although these tactics can quickly raise the rank of your page and increase traffic, in the long run, having your site removed from Google’s search engine isn’t worth it. If you have an external company handling your on-sight and off-sight SEO, make sure they are following the rules and playing fair.
Google rewards effort and great on-sight and off-sight SEO takes time and hard work but at the end of the day, your website will be at the top of the rankings and you didn’t risk getting punished by the big “G”.
View full post on .Com Marketing Blog | Internet Marketing Trends | Interactive Marketing
Google’s Latest Changes Hamper Black Hat SEO Practices is a post from:
Related posts:
- Fun Social Media Tips to Increase Your Black Friday & Cyber Monday Sales The Holiday shopping season is about to kick off…
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Google’s Priority Inbox Makes Email Smarter
Aug 31st
Google, which has most recently been trying to divert users away from Skype by integrating Google Voice with Gmail, just added another innovation to its stable: Priority Inbox. TechCrunch has more:
Google has built a system that figures out which of your messages are important, and presents them at the top of the screen so you don’t miss them. The rest of your messages are still there, but you don’t have to dig through dozens of newsletters and confirmations to find the diamonds in rough.
The beauty of the system lies in its simplicity — it’s nearly as easy as Gmail’s one click spam filter. There’s almost no setup: once it’s activated on your account, you’ll see a prompt asking you if you want to enable Priority Inbox. You can choose from a few options (the order of your various inboxes and if there are any contacts you’d like to always mark ‘Important’) but don’t have to setup any rules or ‘teach’ Gmail what you want it to mark important. It just works, at least most of the time.
The system uses a plethora of criteria to decide which messages are most important: things like how frequently you open and/or respond to messages from a given sender, how often you read messages that contain a certain keyword, and whether or not the message is addressed solely to you or looks like it was sent to a mailing list. If you come across a message that’s been marked important when it shouldn’t have been, you can hit an arrow to tell Gmail it’s messed up. Likewise, if a message that should have been flagged gets sent to the ‘everything else’ area, you can promote it. Through these actions Gmail gets progressively smarter, so the system should work better over time.
TechCrunch writer Jason Kincaid also says that now that a computer is prioritizing your email, intros will becoming even more important. Perhaps someone will develop a kind of SEO strategy for getting a prospect’s attention via email, based on the kinds of keywords Gmail tends to prioritize. That said, not doing annoying things in an email, like starting it with “Dear Sean” (not my name) or “Hey there,” both intros that I discovered in my inbox this morning, will always help your case.
View full post on Business Pundit
Google’s App Inventor: A Smart Market Share Move
Jul 12th
Google released App Inventor today, a program that makes creating Android apps easy enough that a non-programmer can do it. InformationWeek, where I read about this, points out that Google is lowering the barrier to app dev entry at the same time that Apple is making its rules “increasingly restrictive.” It’s a good point. From InfoWeek:
While App Inventor apps may lack the sophistication of Android apps coded by professional developers, they can nonetheless make use of a variety of powerful features. App Inventor provides access to GPS, accelerometer, and orientation data, telephony services like phone calls and texting, speech-to-text services, contact data, persistent storage, and Web services such as those provided by Amazon and Twitter.
Some of these services aren’t for technophobes — TinyWebDB, which stores data on the Web using Google App Engine, requires some software installation and Python text file editing. But App Inventor really does allow programming novices to create functional Android apps.
Coding in App Inventor involves moving blocks about on screen and editing their properties where appropriate. App Inventor is based on MIT’s Open Blocks Java library. Google says the tool builds upon the work of Seymour Papert and the MIT Logo Group.
Apple last year made much of the fact that there were far more iPhone apps available than there were apps on other mobile platforms. It still has the lead with about 200,000 apps, but the marketing value of boasting about app count has been declining as the Android app count has risen.
For more information on App Inventor, check out this Google page.
App Inventor is a brilliant market-share move by Google. Lowering the barriers to entry for app development will spur peoples’ interest in Android development–and, by extension, Android-based smartphones. App Inventor also has the benefit of luring kids and teens into app development, making early and hopefully lifelong Android fans out of them.
Google is also making app development accessible at an ideal time. Smartphones are hot, apps are sexy, and knowledge around developing an app is in high demand right now (check out your local app developer’s hourly rates if you want to know what I’m talking about). People are hungry to get their hands on this particular ability.
Google just filled a very ripe niche. I doubt Apple, which seems to have become rigid to customer needs, will respond in kind. But on some level, Apple’s gotta be feeling this.
View full post on Business Pundit
Google’s Forecast for Business Apps Is Mostly Cloudy
Mar 15th
Google’s Forecast for Business Apps Is Mostly Cloudy
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
At the end of last year I wrote a prediction piece for AMEX OPENForum suggesting that 2010 would be the year that small businesses move more computing power online or, using the more trendy term, to the cloud.
Google and Microsoft are both working very hard to create adoption of online versions of the most commonly used software tools such as spreadsheets, word processors and databases.
In my mind Google just took a giant leap forward with the launch of the Google Apps Marketplace. The Apps Marketplace functions much like the iPhone or Android applications marketplaces, but all of the apps found here integrate in one way of another with the existing Google Apps suite of tools. With the additional functionality that can come with integration of tools to do just about anything look for Google Apps to take a giant leap in adoption from both enterprise and small business.
Combine Google Apps and the souped up functionality available in the Apps Marketplace with GMail and Google Calendar and you now have the ability easily run you entire company with software and services in the cloud. Setting up your domain with Google Apps for domains, at $50 per year per user, allows you to create custom white label versions of the Google Apps for a seamless branded experience.
Below are few examples of the types of applications found in the Apps Marketplace.
Time Bridge – makes scheduling of meetings with various staff or even outside vendors much easier.
Expensify – Easy expense tracking and reporting
Survey Monkey – popular survey tool integrates into Google Apps
Cordys Process Factory – helps users of Google Apps to create workflows, automate business processes
TripIt – Share travel details such as hotels and flights with staff
You’ll also find offerings from familiar names such as Intuit, FreshBooks, Vertical Response, MailChimp and Zoho. The online application space is getting very interesting and it still has a long way to go, but the near future have just been defined.
Like this post? Share it with others
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Google’s China Withdrawal As Much Politics as Business
Mar 15th
After stalled talks with China, Google is likely to close its operations there. It looks like Google won’t be able to operate in China without censoring results, so the search company, which won’t run a censored search engine, is poised to pull out. The Wall Street Journal has details:
Chinese authorities on Friday told local news Web sites that Google’s Chinese site is likely to close and that, if it does, the news sites will be required to use only official accounts of the situation, rather than publish stories from anywhere else, according to a person familiar with the order. A person familiar with situation said on Saturday that Google is likely to take action within weeks.
Google’s closure of Google.cn would leave the Internet in China—which has about 400 million users, more than any other country, and is adding about 250,000 more each day—almost entirely dominated by local companies.
That helps the Chinese government’s efforts to control information, because it can more easily control local companies, but it means foreign participation in one of the fastest-growing parts of China’s economy will be limited, and it leaves Chinese users increasingly isolated.
If (Google.cn) is closed, Google could still offer Chinese-language search to Chinese users from offshore, as it did for several years before it started Google.cn in 2006. Users could also theoretically continue to use other Google services, such as Gmail, that are based outside China.
Google intends to keep some non-search business operations in China.
Google has argued that China is violating World Trade Organization rules by censoring the Internet, and has urged Congress to look into the matter. The Chinese government maintains that it is not violating any rules.
Google agreed to censor its search results in 2006 to gain a bigger Chinese market share. It changed its stance after being hit by cyberattacks originating in China earlier this year.
By withdrawing from China, Google is taking a stand against censorship. Google, however, has been censoring for about 4 years already, has deep ties with the Obama administration, and doesn’t have a big market share in China anyway. The company’s move is also in sync with Hillary Clinton’s statement against the information curtain that Internet censorship represents.
Meanwhile, China is already angry about US arms sales to Taiwan. There’s more to this story than freedom of information (Google’s spin) and the Chinese government’s adherence to its “Internet clean-up” campaign.
View full post on Business Pundit
